It Doesn't Announce Itself

There isn't a day this starts. No appointment where someone tells you the relationship has changed and here is your new role in it. It arrives in fragments. A bill that didn't get paid. The third time this week they've asked the same question. A conversation where you realize partway through that you're managing them, and that you've been doing it for a while. What makes this disorienting isn't the work. It's that the behaviours stop matching the person. Your father does something your father wouldn't do. Your mother says something your mother wouldn't say. And you're standing there trying to hold two versions of someone at once — the one in front of you and the one who raised you.The relationship starts to fragment. Not break. Fragment, in small pieces, over a long time.